The Hundred Dollar Girl

by William Campbell Gault

  “Gus sold him out?”

  Snip grimaced. “Who knows? In that division, there’s no big money riding, so it doesn’t have to be spread. And on those local fixes, how many have to know?”

  “Snip,” I said, “you’ve really got nothing on Gus, then, have you?”

  “For a dollar,” he said, “what do you want? If I was active, if I could get around, I could ask some old friends. But I wouldn’t want ‘em to come here and see Aggie, guy like me, with the broads I used to shack with. I got some pride left, don’t forget.”

  It was one of his petulant days, his reminiscent days. I said nothing, being patient.

  “Galbini,” he said, and looked again at the gray grass. “Nah, I don’t think he’s got any tie-ups. Lopez, now — he’s got that sister.”

  “What sister?”

  “Don’t you remember? The one that got all that ink when Bugsy Martin went to the gas chamber? Remember, she claimed they were engaged and all.”

  “I remember now,” I said. “But her name was Loper, not Lopez, Mary Loper. She was a model, right?”

  “She was a model,” Snip agreed, “and she called herself Loper. So she’s still Terry’s sister and who says she can’t change one letter in her last name?”

  “Are you sure she’s Lopez’ sister?” I asked.

  “One will get you five,” he said. “And Bugsy Martin was no bush league hood, either. There’s your angle, if you’re looking for a big money tie-up.”

  I shook my head doubtfully. “I never once, in all that publicity, remember her being mentioned as the sister of Terry Lopez.”

  “Jesus!” Snip shook his head, too. “Man — is that how you stay hep, reading the newspapers? Check it, check it. Everybody knows it, except maybe newspaper readers. Where’s the fin?”

  I took out my wallet. It contained two fives and three singles. “I’m kind of low, Snip,” I explained. “I wonder if — ”

  “You’re not as low as I am,” he reminded me. “Come on — I want to get off the grape and back onto corn and it takes a fin — ”

  “Okay,” I said, and that left me eight dollars. “If you learn any more — ”

  “I’ll ask around,” he promised. “As soon as this bellyache goes away, I’ll ask around. Cripes, I’m not rich enough to have ulcers, am I?”

  “You should see a doctor, Snip,” I told him quietly. “You can owe him. Everybody owes doctors.”

  chapter two

  A REPORTER I KNEW HAD THE CURRENT ADDRESS OF MARY Lopez Loper and I drove out to West Los Angeles on the off chance that she might be home.

  It was a one-level triplex just outside of the Cheviot Hills section, a low and attractive building of antiqued barn siding and heavy shakes with a separate patio for each unit.

  Miss Loper had the rear unit and the nicest patio, of red brick with a view of the hills to the east and the distant ocean to the south. She, like Snip Caster, was taking advantage of the sun but there was nothing flaccid or pale about the skin she exposed.

  She was lying on an aluminum chaise longue with a floral and white pad, in a Bikini and all the flesh in sight was a golden brown. Her hair was a sun-bleached brown, her eyes as brown and soft as her brother’s.

  She was a thin girl but not in any sense emaciated. She looked up to see me staring at her and for a moment she seemed startled.

  “Joe Puma is my name,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  She rose to a sitting position. “Oh? And?” “I’d like to talk with you about your brother.” The brown eyes clouded and then glazed over. “My brother?”

  I nodded. “Terry Lopez.”

  She took a breath. She paused, and then said, “Not many people know he is my brother. Who told you?”

  “A friend of mine. I’d rather not mention his name.”

  “Well,” she said, after a second, “it is a change. I mean, to have a snooper interested in somebody besides me. You’re not a reporter, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Scout’s honor. It’s the Mueller-Lopez fight I’d like to talk about.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “Is it supposed to be — fixed, crooked?”

  “At least one person thinks so,” I said. I came over to sit on the other chaise longue.

  She swung her feet around and lowered them to the ground. She leaned forward to stare at me and her slim halter afforded very little coverage. I averted my eyes.

  She smiled, and sat more erectly. “One person thinks so? One person named what?”

  “One nameless person,” I answered. “Do you know Gus Galbini very well?”

  “I know him. But surely he isn’t talking about a fixed fight?”

  “Not to my knowledge. What do you think of Gus?”

  She frowned. “I don’t really know him well enough to have an opinion on him. The — few times we met, he didn’t impress me.”

  I paused and then asked, “Was he a — friend of Bugsy Martin’s?”

  She stared at me for seconds. “That was below the belt, wasn’t it?”

  “Not intentionally. I was looking for a — tie-up.” She said nothing, glaring at me.

  “If a fight of this importance is going to be fixed,” I explained gently, “it would be fixed only for important money. And that means the money would have to be spread around more than locally. It would imply the use of some — some organization, a syndicate. So far as I can learn, Gus Galbini isn’t involved with any syndicate.” I took a breath. “So, investigation being my business, I had to investigate any possible connection, however remote.”

  She said nothing.

  “Doesn’t that make sense?” I asked. “Believe me, I’m not here to cause you any trouble.”

  She licked her lips, started to say something, and then must have decided against it.

  “I’ll go,” I said, after a few seconds. “Somehow, I’ve given you the wrong idea of why I’m here. I apologize for that.” I started to get up.

  “Wait,” she said. “Sit down and relax, Mr. Puma.”

  I sat down and looked at her patiently.

  She licked her lips again. “I — never thought of Sal as a — a mobster.”

  “Sal?”

  “The man you call Bugsy. The man everybody calls Bugsy, Salvadore Peter Martino, called Bugsy Martin. I never met any of his friends who looked like racketeers. When he — died, and the papers wrote those horrible stories about me, it was as though they were writing about somebody else.” She broke off, staring at the patio.

  “He was a big man,” I said, “but he came up through the mobs and there was no reason to think he ever left them.”

  “I believe that,” she said. And added, “Now.”

  A silence and she went on. “He knew Gus Galbini. Gus introduced him to me.”

  “And your brother to his wife,” I added. “Is that all Gus knows — models?”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Models? Are you referring to Bridget Gallegher Lopez as a model?”

  “Wasn’t she?”

  Mary Loper shrugged. “So all right, if that’s your name for it.”

  “Let me put it this way — did she ever do any modeling?”

  “To my knowledge, and I know the ones who are working, she never did any professional modeling. But she’s my brother’s wife and if she wants to call her old profession modeling, I won’t argue with it.”

  Her face had been stiff and her voice strained as she said this. She seemed embarrassed when she’d finished.

  I smiled. “You don’t like her, huh?”

  She said slowly, “I suppose, if she wasn’t married to my brother, I’d like that girl. I guess I don’t have much feeling about her, one way or the other.”

  I had learned what I had come to learn; Gus Galbini had known Bugsy Martin and that was a tenuous mob tie-up. There wasn’t much more I was likely to learn here; why did I linger?

  “Don’t stare at me like that,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.” I looked away
, toward the hills.

  After a few seconds, she asked, “What were you thinking about, when you were staring at me?”

  “Of Salvadore Peter Martino, alias Bugsy Martin. Don’t you believe he deserved the gas chamber?”

  She hesitated, then said quietly, “I don’t believe anybody does. And I don’t think Sal killed that girl.”

  The woman she referred to as “that girl” had been a witness to a shooting in a Valley restaurant frequented by hoodlums. She had been killed two nights later. And the slugs recovered from her body had matched a gun traced to Bugsy Martin.

  To me, that had been the weakest link in the D.A.’s case.

  Because no professional would use a gun that could be in any way connected with him. And Bugsy had been no amateur.

  But the jury had been and Bugsy had died in the gas chamber.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked again.

  “The same — Salvadore Peter Martino. He ran into a real tiger of a D.A., didn’t he?”

  She sighed. “Yes. Sal’s lawyer didn’t want to take a chance on a jury, but Sal insisted.” She grimaced. “Sal had a lot of confidence in his own — charm.”

  With reason, I thought. With reason, if he charmed you, Mary Loper Lopez.

  I rose and looked down at her, all brown, flesh, eyes, and hair. If she was still mourning Bugsy Martin, it was not evident to my untrained observation.

  I said, “Thanks. Can you think of anything else to tell me that might help?”

  “No. But I’ll talk with Terry, if you want to phone back. Terry rarely lies to me. Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to learn if a fight is crooked?”

  I smiled. “It would be, if the fighters were honest. But if they were honest, there wouldn’t be any need to ask, would there?”

  “I’ll ask him, anyway,” she said. She paused. Coquettishly? She paused, anyway, and said, “And then I’ll call you.”

  I said, with warm and simple dignity, “I’ll look forward to your call.”

  I went back to my car thinking of all that beautiful brown, wondering how a lovely like Mary Loper could have settled for a creep like Bugsy Martin. Women had the most unpredictable tastes….

  In the car, I sat for a moment, reviewing my labors up to now. I had asked a lot of questions, but what had I learned? Only that Gus Galbini had known Bugsy Martin.

  Bugsy was dead; there was no line of inquiry open there.

  It wasn’t far from here to the address Bridget Gallegher Lopez had given me. I drove over.

  It was a small new home on an expensive lot in the hills above Westwood. The semiclassic redhead was home. She opened the front door and said, “Well, hello! News already?”

  “Very little,” I said. “I did learn that Galbini knew Bugsy Martin.” I paused. “And also that Gus introduced you to your husband.”

  Her pause was longer than mine had been. Then she said, “Come in and tell me what this all means.”

  I came into a paneled living room with a high-hearth fireplace, furnished in expensive contemporary.

  “Drink?” she asked.

  I shook my head, holding her gaze.

  She didn’t move. “Who did you ask about Bugsy Martin?” “His former girl friend.” “Mary?” I nodded.

  Bridget Gallegher Lopez sighed and went over to sit on a pastel yellow love seat. She looked at the floor as she said, “Mary hates me, doesn’t she?”

  “I doubt it. I’m not here to relay family gossip, Mrs. Lopez.”

  “Mary hates me,” she said, more vehemently this time.

  I ignored that. I said quietly, “Now, why don’t you tell me all you know about Galbini, and maybe I’ll be better equipped to help.”

  She looked up. “Help?”

  “To frame him, nail him, expose him — whatever you had in mind when you came to my office.”

  Her chin went up and her blue eyes glistened. “You don’t need to be insulting. You’ve been listening to Mary. She sold you, didn’t she?”

  I said nothing.

  “I tried to be friends with Mary,” she went on. “Frankly, I like her. We — we could enjoy each other. But she hates me.” I made no comment.

  The girl was working herself into a rage, now. “Loper — huh! Ashamed of her real name. Ashamed of her brother and hates his wife. What is she, a saint? A woman who lived with Bugsy Martin? Of all the slimy people I’ve ever met, that Bugsy Martin was the slimiest. Who does she think she — ”

  “When did you meet Bugsy?” I interrupted.

  She glared at me. “What difference does it make?”

  I shrugged. “I can never be sure what difference anything makes. I just go along asking questions until the light starts to break through.”

  She took a breath and said, “You don’t have to ask any more questions for me. Just send me a bill for today and forget you ever saw me.”

  I stood up, and smiled down at her. “All right, though it won’t be easy. Good luck, Mrs. Lopez.”

  “Goodbye!” she said hoarsely.

  I went out thoroughly dismissed.

  Business picked up the next day and I had no time to think of the Lopez-Galbini-Martino axis for a while. But it must have been milling around in my subconscious, because when the Lopez-Mueller bout came up on a warm Friday evening, I was there in the fifth row.

  Fights usually bore me these days, ineffectual clowns pawing at each other in TV farces. But Lopez, in shape, was a first-class mauler. And the German seemed to have the nasty instincts a real fighter is born with.

  Unfortunately, Lopez wasn’t in shape. If Mueller had been less cautious, it would have been a short fight, because Mueller was always in shape. But Terry Lopez came out for the first round like a Golden Glover, full of swings and scorning defense.

  He had the crowd up and screaming. For less than a second, the German lost his poise — and was tagged with a sucker right hand.

  It wasn’t a button shot, but he was caught off balance and stumbled to one knee. The ref made him take an eight count. The fans went crazy and I looked over to the second row on the south side of the ring to see that Bridget Gallegher Lopez was up on her feet with the rest of Terry’s fans, shrieking to her boy to finish off Hans Mueller.

  The German wasn’t that fragile. He was fully conscious through the count, taking it on one knee. Then he got up, went into his shell, and put his methodical mind to work, looking for flaws and signs of fatigue.

  It was a dull third round to me, though Lopez’ fans didn’t seem to find it dull. Every time Terry threw the big miss, they screamed — and seemed to overlook the hooks Mueller sank into Terry’s belly as he stepped inside the big miss.

  Terry’s speed began to diminish; he went into a left-hand paw and run, as the early rounds wore on. Then, in the sixth, Mueller belted him with a smashing right hand under the heart and I knew Lopez had no starch left.

  He ran, he danced, he even clowned. But the German stalked him steadily, putting that hook into the belly, throwing that inside right to the heart.

  Terry’s smile was painful and his guard came down to protect his reddened stomach. Now, I thought, Mueller can get the button shot he’s been setting up.

  Twice, in the ninth, the German had a clear chance to end it, and both times he refused the opportunity. Terry was going on instinct now; he had nothing left but his guts.

  It would have been a simple act of mercy if Mueller had ended it with the big one; but he seemed intent on vengeance, on punishment. He saved the Sunday punch for the last thirty seconds of the last round.

  On the floodlighted canvas, Lopez didn’t even stir. I looked over to see the shock and dismay on the face of Bridget Gallegher Lopez. Then I got up and hurried out to the clean air.

  I thought of what that two-bit bookie had told me at Barney Delamater’s gym. This Hans Mueller was a storm trooper, a tough and insulated man.

  In a sense it had been just punishment for a man who took his training as lightly as Terry Lopez, but it had looked to
o deliberate to me, too vengeful.

  I stopped off for a couple of drinks before going home, and got into bed about eleven o’clock. Four hours later, at the ridiculous hour of three in the morning, my doorbell rang steadily and disturbingly.

  I came up out of the fog of a licentious dream and stumbled, cursing, to the door to look into the belligerent face of Detective Sergeant Marty Dugan of the West Los Angeles Station.

  “What in hell,” I asked him, “can be important enough to bring you here at this hour?”

  “The Mueller-Lopez fight,” he answered. “Should I wait inside, or have you got some broad here for the night?”

  “Come in, come in,” I said. “What about the Mueller-Lopez fight?”

  He came in, looked around at my slovenly housekeeping with a married man’s disdain, and said, “You tell me what about it. You were investigating it a while back. Was it fixed and who fixed it?”

  “I didn’t learn much,” I told him, “and what I learned can wait until daylight. You must be drunk, Marty. What’s the big rush? What makes it important right now?”

  “Gus Galbini,” he said. “He was killed about an hour ago, murdered.”

  chapter three

  THERE WASN’T ANY REASON FOR HIM TO DRAG ME DOWN TO the West Los Angeles Station; I could have told him all I knew in five minutes. But he insisted that Captain Apoyan wanted to see me, so I went along down to Purdue Street.

  Flash bulbs flared and reporters crowded around as we came into the station.

  Marty steered me past the reporters, ignoring their questions and smiling at their gibes. He hated them personally but needed them politically; he smiled us all the way to Captain Apoyan’s office.

  There, he closed the door, and cursed under his breath. Apoyan was talking to another detective and he looked up and frowned.

  “Here’s your man, Captain,” Marty Dugan said. “Will you want me in here?”

  Apoyan nodded and looked at Marty for seconds before shifting his gaze to me. “Well,” he said, “what’s your story?”

  “I don’t have any,” I said. “If you’ve got questions, ask them.” I lit a cigarette and came over to sit in a chair near his desk.